Kevin Magnussen “We’re certainly hoping for better things in Russia”

Kevin Magnussen is looking forward to the 2016 Russian Grand Prix, after a troublesome time at the Shanghai International Circuit, including a suspension failure during qualifying, which hampered the rest of his weekend.

The Dane has always gone well in Russia, having finished fifth at the Sochi Autodrom in 2014 when driving for the McLaren F1 team as a rookie, as well as scoring a first and second position on both visits to Russia during his Formula Renault 3.5 campaign in 2012 and 2013. Magnussen will be hoping for a similar result next Sunday, to add to his resume.

“For us the race [ in China] was pretty steady and not too eventful,” said Magnussen. “You don’t mind when you have a race like that when you’re near the front, but that wasn’t the case so it won’t go down as one of my more memorable events!

“It was a race where everyone finished, so we couldn’t capitalise on better reliability than the opposition. We’re certainly hoping for better things in Russia.”

Team-mate Jolyon Palmer meanwhile is hoping he can get back to the performance levels he saw in the first round of the 2016 Formula One Season, after a poor 2016 Chinese Grand Prix weekend, where the Brit finished dead last.

“My first aim is to get back to a Melbourne level of performance where I was happy with the car,” said Palmer. “As a team too, we were happy with the level of performance as we were through to Q2 in qualifying and near the points in the race with both cars quite evenly matched. I haven’t been able to replicate that in the last couple of races so that’s what we’ve been focusing on.

“We know that Russia won’t necessarily be the very best circuit for us, but I’m focused on my own performance to extract the very most I can from behind the wheel.

“For me the best thing about Russia is that I won the first ever GP2 Series race there and that race won me the championship so I have very good memories of the Sochi Autodrom!”

After a tough weekend in China the Renault Sport F1 team are confident of showing good improvement when they hit the track in Sochi.